The Humane Society Institute for Science and Policy
Animal Studies Repository
1980
Objectives of Animal Use in Biology Courses
William V. Mayer
National Association of Biology Teachers
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Recommended Citation
Mayer, W.V. (1980). Objectives of animal use in biology courses. In H. McGiffin & N. Brownley (Eds.), Animals in education: Use of
animals in high school biology classes and science fairs (pp. 11-16). Washington, DC: The Institute for the Study of Animal Problems.
This Report is brought to you for free and open access by the Humane Society Institute for Science and Policy. It has been accepted for inclusion by an
authorized administrator of the Animal Studies Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected].
_,
Objectives of Animal Use in
Biology Courses
William V. Mayer
Abstract
To confine discussion of educational use of animals to experimentation is to focus
on only part of the animal use problem. To focus on use of animals in the classroom
solely is to negate the value of field and community resource areas such as zoos, animal
parks, nature trails, etc. The primary objective in dealing with living organisms is to incul·
cate a respect for all life. Objectives that focus on use of living animals for experimental
purposes can, at best, be secondary and may in many cases be contrived. An understanding of anima/life requirements and animal contributions is an objective worthy of
pursuit. Living animals in the classroom give viability to biological studies and provide
opportunities for animal-human interaction that can be channeled into a series of positive behaviors. Animals have been misused in classrooms by being considered solely as
experimental objects through which to ascertain the fundamentals of anatomy and physiology. Much broader objectives must be sought if animal use is to make a meaningful
contribution to the educated citizenry of the future.
Introduction
Biology is the study of l ife and, as such, should deal with the living. Classical bio logy was chiefly an investigation into systematics and morphology, based primarily o n
preserved, stuffed, skeletonized, or otherwise prepared specimens. Laboratory investigations focused not on biology, but rather necrology (Mayer, 1973). In m any biology
classes the student never saw a living organism. The emphasis was not on experimentation; it was confined to observations of a confirmational nature. The laboratory, as it
was called, was primarily a site for dissection. This was conducted on the basis of lookdissect-draw·l abel·memori~e. There was little for a student to gain from such exercises
that was not already obta inable in the labelled diagrams included in most textbooks.
Limited experimentation, here again basically of a confirmational nature. was conducted through the discipline of physiology. Nerve-m uscle preparations and observations
of heartbeat. peristalsis, and occasio nally metabolic rate were about the only ways live
animals were used in physiology courses.
As we approach the end of the twentieth century, declining enrollments, static
budgets, high costs, additiona l workload, limited facil it ies, and the expenditure of time
militate against laboratory work in biology. One finds not more but less emphasis o n
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W.V. Mayer-Animal Use in Biology Courses
W.V. Mayer-Animal Use in Biology Courses
the laboratory today than in the early sixties. Of the laboratory work offered, only a
fractional amount is devoted to animals, and of this, an even tinier fraction involves
live animals. The frog. by choice or custom. is still the most commonly used laboratory
vertebrate The care and attention that must be devoted to live vertebrates in the classroom has worked strongly against their use. Thus, animal use in biology classrooms is.
at best, limited; and the publicity concerning inhumane treatment of an1mals in bioi·
ogy classes is primarily concerned with that aberrant incident such as in a science fair
where teacher and student are involved in an experiment usually beyond the capaci·
ties of both.
There is no call. from an educational standpoint, to subject animals to any form
of cruelty. The frustrated medical school aspirat ions of some teachers and frequent
parental hopes that Little Johnny may become an MD do not provide a rational basis
for surgical Intervention sloppi ly performed and imperfectly understood. It is not the
province of the secondary school to teach either cruelty or callousness. and to subject
animals to either for the pursuit of trivial and in some cases deceptive objectives can·
not be condoned.
If animals. and particularly vertebrate animals. are so little used in the formal
course work of biology, one wou ld doubt the necessity for a conference on the use of
animals in high school biology cl asses. However, it is the presence of living organisms
that distinguishes biology classrooms from the others in an average school. Therefore I,
for one, speak for increased use of animals in high school biology classes and science
projects. Not in the pseudo-surgical style of pretended experimentation, but with an
entirely different set of objectives. In looking back through high school laboratory
manuals, it is hard to see as valid an objective such as, " To dissect a frog and study its
internal stru cture." Remembering that for at least 50 percent of our population. bioi·
ogy may be the first, last. and only science to which they are exposed. it is difficult to
ascertain the value of knowing the internal structure of a frog and how to dissect one
as a long-term educational goal for the average citizen. That is about as meaningful as
having the students learn the parts of a crayfish appendage. which can also be considered inert knowledge, for those names have no meaning in the life of most citizens
The question constantly has to be asked, why! Why are we doing certain things in
the classroom? And if the answer to why is trivial or limited to but a tiny fraction of our
population, 1t seems an unnecessary taSk to pursue at this level. The answers to why
questoons constitute a set of objectives for animal use in biology courses.
concept of back to basics would be acceptable if we could only agree on just what it is
basics were, and whose basics we should go back to. Educationists are constantly
under pressure to add something to the curriculum. remove something from the curriculum, or change something within the curriculum. And, in attempting to placate those
diverse and often contradictory points of view. education seems to proceed in a pat·
tern consisting of two steps forward. one step back. followed by a series of lateral arabesques.
As noted. in order to establish a meanmgful educational pattern, the question
why! must be constantly asked. Why are we doing certain things? Why is a certain
topic in a curriculum? Why are we having students do t his, that, or the other? And answers such as "We've always done it." " It's good for the student," " It prepares them for
college," "It trains the mind" are inadequate substantiation. We might start with asking
why biology is taught at all in high school. If its purpose is to acquaint the student with
the living world and his interrelationships with it in t ime and space. then all other
objectives become subsidiary to that one. We rea lize that our primary objective is not
the training of biologists. for it is not the role of the secondary school to initiate career
goals that would of necessity be based on inadequate exposure to a given field. Fifty
percent of today's citizens do not go on to college. and secondary school for half our
population must be regarded as a term inal educational experience, not a college preparatory one. Of thirty students in a required ninth-grade science course. onl y one can
be expected to study science as far as the bachelor's degree level. Of a thousand stu·
dents entering the fifth grade, only 732 will graduate from high school, only 285 will
enter college, only 220 will graduate, and only 40 of those will obtain science degrees
(T arp, 1978). In our secondary schools, therefore. we are training citizens for scientific
or. in this case, biological literacy. The content of the curriculum must be judged
within that objective.
The Purposes of Education
Educational objectives are somewhat like the weather; everyone talks about
them. but little is done about them. When one questions objectives. one normally gets
high-sounding platitudes in response. The purposes of education are to teach students
to think, to become productive citizens, to be able to learn on their own, and to become reasoning and reasonable beings. To be against these proud objectives is akin to
being against both mother and apple pie. But just because these are so broad and diffi·
cult to measure, objectives almost trivial in nature are frequently substituted. Classrooms then concentrate on detail rather than concept, and on measurable outcomes in
lieu of pervasive objectives more difficult to quantify.
Education is a multibillion dollar, ad hoc enterprise which, because it has illdefined objectives. is pulled and hauled from one side to another by pressure groups
and educational faddists. Many of t he pressures are not in themselves bad. The
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ANIMALS IN EDUCATION
Changing Roles of Animals in Education
The past two decades have seen marked changes m the content and conceptual
load of secondary school b1ology courses I am proud of what the Biological Sciences
Curriculum Study has done to bring about these changes, for I believe them to be
changes for the better. Prior to 1960 the emphasis 1n h1gh school biology was primarily
on morphology and systematiCS Urgamsm structure and organism identification were
the two major emphases in terms of course content. The past twenty years have seen a
diminution in this emphasis to accommodate the inclusion of such topics as molecular
biology, genetics. ecology, behavior. and similar topics. With t his change in content
and concept, together with the changing role of the sC'hool. there has actually been a
diminution rather than an increase in animal use.
The biological supply houses that used to provide barrels of pickled frogs, cray·
fish, grasshoppers, earthworm s, and other organisms for dissection find this portion of
their business greatly reduced. Economics, if nothing else, ha s dictated less use of expensive. expendable laboratory suppl ies such as preserved or living specimens. The
changing school day, the unionization of teachers, and the general turning away from
science have also brought less dependence on laboratory-centered activity and more
on textbook exercises. Many of the affective objectives of education can be inculcated
without extensive laboratory experiences. as evidenced by " Invitations to Inquiry,"
developed by Joseph j . Schwab(Mayer. 1978). In t he face of such changes, what is the
role of animals in a biology classroom?
ANIMALS IN EDUCATION
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W.V. Mayer-Animal Use in Biology Courses
W.V. Mayer- Animal Use in Biology Courses
The Value of Animals in Education
I inveigh against the use of animals in contrived and essentially specious circumstances. The bulk of so-called animal experimentation at the secondary school level
constitutes not only not an experiment bu t frequently a device to teach lessons we
really do not want students to learn. Sacrificing animals for trivial causes cannot be
justified. So many times teachers have said that students must use animals in order to
absorb the scientific method or to understand experimentation. But the scientific
method and controlled experiments can be performed without the use of any animal
or indeed, of any living organism. As a matter of fact, living organisms are largely
unsatisfactory experimental subjects because of their high degree of variabil ity and t he
extreme difficulty of controlling those variables in order to have a truly controlled
experimental situation. Teachers frequently complain t hat students have little success
with animal experimentation because the answers " don't come out right." Animals
constitute fairly complex experimental organi sms and require a degree of sophisticat ion for their proper use not possessed by secondary school students nor, occasionally,
by their teachers.
Why are animals to be used in biology courses? One answer is to give t he students
an acquaintance with examples of the vast panoply of organisms that exist. Represen·
tatives of various animal phyla provide dramatic evidence of diversity, adaptation, and
behavior. To see t he underside of a starfish as it crawls along the glass of an aquarium
will leave a much more vivid picture of the structure and function of a water vascular
system and tube feet in locomotion than any number of pictures or lines of text could
possibly communicate. To feel that a snake is not cold and slimy but at room temperature and surprisingly dry is to communicate an important bit of inform ation about this
legless reptile. To touch a toad and not get warts is to give lie to the old w ives' tale. The
examples are infinite. Aquatic and terrestrial, vertebrate and invertebrate, male and female-all attest to t he infinite variety w ithin the animal kingdom, and each example
teaches both conscious and subconscious lessons in a fashion far more vivid and far
longer retained than simply tell ing or reading or looking at pictures. Demonstration,
then, is an effective form of education, and to observe and perhaps touch a variety of
living organisms constitutes a powerful lesson in w hat an animal is and what a great
diversity of animals there are.
A second answer to t he question why?is to provide an unders tanding o f animal
behavior, whi ch can only be communicated by living organ isms and observation of
their living. Watching a rabbit or a guinea pig eat a meal or clean its young provides
data not easily communicated either by photograph or text. Listening to a bird sing, a
frog croak, or a snake hiss provides dramatic evidence of another type of communication. To watch interactions between organisms - the behavior of a single mouse is not
the same as it is when that mouse is with others- is to begin to understand social structures. Social interaction teaches powerful lessons.
A t hird answer to why I wou ld keep animals in the laboratory is to develop an understanding of animal care and a sense of responsibility for caring. The nutritional requirements of animals-the food, the water, the necessity for cage cleaning (a concept
of sanitation), the development of an animal environment, suitable protection against
temperature changes (wind, sun, noise), nesting materials or bedding, balancing an
aquarium, the interaction of plants and animals - all can be taught by the care and
maintenance of animals. An aquarium, a terrarium, or anim als individually or collectively housed teach a variety of lessons that require both thought and responsibility. To
have responsible students take animals home for weekends or holidays enlarges upon
this objective. living organisms meet certain childhood needs not likely to be as effectively met by other alternatives (Wastnedge, 1972).
Animals in Science Projects
Caring for animals, observing them, understanding their requirements for life,
comprehending their diversity, and learning new things about them are worthwhile objectives. But transcending all of these is a more important and derivative objectiverespect for living things. Respect is not taught directly: it is learned by example and application. I cannot think of a more powerful objective for animal use, and one unlikely
to be achieved in any way but by contact with l iving organisms w ithin a framework of
guid ance and example.
These objectives, which are primarily w ithin t he affective domain, are difficult to
clarify and to measure. But to make no attempt to achieve them is a capitulation to
the more prosaic and mundane type of objective as when the student places acetic
acid on the back of a frog to observe a reflex action far better demonstrated through
the patellar reflex of a fellow student.
As noted in the title of this conference, we are to deal not only with high school
biology classes, but also with science projects. It is in this latter category that most of
what has been categorized as animal mistreatment occurs. Too often, students have
inadequate supervision for science projects. They are designed, in large measure, to be
done on the student's own, as independent pieces of work. Frequent ly, they are accomplished outside the school. But the greatest source of difficulty is attempting to run
before one can crawl. Students are naturally attracted to frontier kinds of research,
usually the more bizarre the better, and they attempt sophisticated experimentation
with crude apparatus, little comprehension of what is to be done or how to do it, in a
largely unsupervised milieu. This experimental use of animals has often been occasioned by the frustrated medical ambitions of certain biology teachers rather than by
the applicability of the experimentation to the curricu lum as a whole and the student
enterprise in particular. There are teachers who feel that animal experimentation is a
worthy secondary school activity because of what one might call the Dr. Kil dare Syn·
drome. Unfortunately, most of this animal experimentation is not on ly beyond the skill
of the student but frequently beyond the skill of the teacher. It ends up teaching no
lesson except that animals suffer and die in inexperienced hands.
I have judged science fairs at IotaI, state, and national levels, and in talking to t he
students have found many but poorly understood what they had attempted to do
when using animals. Some did not demonstrate responsibility for the living organisms
in their charge. Such activities not only do not constitute an educational experience,
but demonstrate an absence of educational growth and a callous disregard for living
organisms. It redounds poorly on both the teacher and the student to attempt work for
which neither has sufficient background. Rules by which people would be quite w illing
to abide in t he physical sciences seem to be ignored in the biological sciences. One
does not usually begin constructing one's first refracting telescope by grinding a
twelve-inch mirror; one starts out on smaller blanks to master the technique. In electronics, students are perfectly willing to master basic circuitry before working with mi·
crocircuits, but I have yet to see a student who understood enough about the normal
behavior of an organism to be able to contrast it w ith whatever the experimental behavior turned out to be.
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ANIMALS IN EDUCATION
ANIMALS 1N EDUCATION
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W.V. Mayer-Animal Use in Biology Courses
There are many worthwhile lessons to be learned from l iving organisms t hat
cou ld constitute decent science fair projects that involve no harm to the organisms involved Studies on locomotion, behavior, interaction. care of the young, food preferences. and so on can all be conducted without any trauma to the organisms concerned
and certainly would teach more than an ill-conceived appl ication of little-understood
technology to less understood animal systems.
Student (and Animal) Welfare
Leonard M. Krause
Human-Animal Interactions
Abstract
It is not going to be possible to isolate students from animals. At home they may
have dogs or cats. or be given a baby chick or d uck at Easter, or have an aquarium, or
p~ l l wings off of flies By ha\ling as a major objective of animal use respect for living
th1ngs, the latter will be unlikely to happen. Not only are students exposed to animals
in the neighborhoods where they live, but zoological parks. wild animal parks. aquariums, and seaquariums are all sources of mformatton about living organisms that transcend the classroom and can be profitable experiences to students trained in observation and understanding of living animals Visits to nationa l parks also provide oppor·
tunities to observe and understand.
The problem is not simply confmed to animals in classrooms. but animals in relation to human beings everywhere. Field and community resource areas are rich in exampl es of human-ammal interactiOn. We've all seen people feeding animals that
shou ld not be fed. attempting to pi ck up anim als that bite. poking at. yelling at, running after, and in general endangering themselves. the animals. and those people who
will come later to observe frightened and antagonistic organisms. Object1ves of animal
use should t ranscend the boundaries of the school But only by beginning in the classroom can we teach those lessons that have applicability beyond the boundaries of the
school.
Conclusion
I do not bel ieve in random animal experimentation in secondary school s. 1 do
believe in using animals to inculcate the k ind of affective objectives that will stand t he
students in good stead, not only in the classroom, but what is more important. outside
th~ classroom as wei~ Only then will they come to develop that respect for all living
thm~s we must have 1f our current environment is to remain unscathed for future generations to possess and enjoy.
References
Mayer. W.V {1973} B1ology: Study of the living or the dead? The American Biology
Teacher 35:27-30.
Mayer, W.V.. ed. (1978) The Biology Teacher's Handbook, 3rd ed., John Wiley, New
York. N.Y.. pp. 372-487.
Tarp, I (1978} Toward scientific literacy for all our students. The Science Teacher
45:38-39.
Wastnedge, E.R. (1972) L1ving organ1sms and the needs of the child In The Educational
Use of Living Material, Centre for Science Education. Chelsea Col lege. London,
U.K .. pp. 3-8.
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ANIMALS IN EDUCATION
Adolescents exhibit affection for numerous vertebrates and appear to sympathize
and to identify with traumas these animals experience. Therapu tic benefits students attach to nurturing and breeding certain vertebrates are evident: destruction of these same
creatures produces clearly negative attitudes by students toward the science course and
the instructor. "Case histories" documented while teaching high school students working
with vertebrates are reviewed and are related to specific techniques (e.g., pithing) utilized
by numerous instructors. Motivation, increased attention span, sustained interest, involvement with community issues and other desirable educational goals are demonstrated to be resultants of student involvement with living vertebrates studied in their
"natural" state.
Introduction
The "charge" to speakers during this fi rst segment of the conference is " .. . to
examine the basic premise of education-and the extent to which animal studies may
contribute." There are. in fact numerous premises, and reference wil l be made later to
them under the rubric, " Educational Objectives ... In order to make concrete the objectives. reference will be made also to specific in- and out-ot-class hands-on activities
with vertebrate animals. Consequently, my presentation wil l overlap somewhat .with
the objectives set for the afternoon session, and I am assuming that this paper will,
nonetheless. meet with the approval of the chairman. and that it will be acceptable to
subsequent speakers.
The Institute for the Study of Animal Problems {ISAP) clearly exists to relate to
animal problems. My opening position suggests that numerous animal problems derive
from people problems. Some kids in my neighborhood derived evident pleasure from
dashing frogs against rocks in a nearby creek . Beetles were tortured with matches.
These children were perhaps sublimating aggressions against creatures whose defenseless posture enabled these events to occur. A Saturday Evening Post cover by Norman
Rockwel l comes to mind. The cover was divided into four scenes: The first quarter
showed a husband being reprim anded by the boss; the second scene depicted that husband expressing anger toward his wife after he arrived home. The third part of the scenano illustrated the wife yelling at her child and the last quarter of the cover enabled
the viewer to see how the child vented his frustrat1on on the pet dog The child was vigorously wagging h1s f inger in the face of the dog whose expression was priceless. No
animal maltreatment was depicted by Rockwel l, as we wou ld expect. The scenario,
however. has remained in my mind as o ne example of passing the buck to a defenseANIMALS I N EDUCATION
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